[opendtv] News: Spectrum-Reclamation Amendment Passes
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: OpenDTV Mail List <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 07:04:06 -0400
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA457257.html?display=Breaking+News&referral=SUPP
Spectrum-Reclamation Amendment Passes
By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 9/29/2004 6:52:00 PM
A compromise spectrum-reclamation amendment passed the Senate Wednesday.
The amendment would require broadcasters occupying channels 62-69 to
give up their analog spectrum by Dec. 31, 2007--earlier than other
broadcasters must turn over theirs--but allow them to keep it longer
if giving it up would disrupt viewers and no first responders are
actively seeking the channel.
The wording was a compromise between Senate Commerce Committee
Chairman John McCain, who wanted the hard giveback date, and Senator
Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), who wanted to give broadcasters plenty of
waiver wiggle room.
McCain argued that the waiver was a loophole that allowed
broadcasters to drag their feet on the DTV switch while keeping the
spectrum from the emergency communications personnel that say they
need it.
McCain cited a hearing he held in 1997 on emergency communications
that featured testimony about the failure of emergency communications
during the Oklahoma City bombing. "That hearing was seven years ago.
We are no better off today. Nothing has changed." He then invoked
9/11 communications problems, saying "nothing has changed.
"We can't wait for decades, for another Oklahoma City or Pentagon or
New York, and hope broadcasters will operate in the best interest of
the public rather than themselves. We have to act now."
Burns countered that broadcasters themselves provide emergency
communications and that the spectrum could be found elsewhere.
In the end, they met somewhere in the middle, though it seemed more
on the side of Burns and broadcasters.
Also on the broadcasters' side was the elimination of an
amendment--from N.J. Democrat Frank Lautenberg-- that would have
established guidelines for DTV public interest obligations. There is
also a billion dollars earmarked from spectrum auctions to help buy
DTV converters for viewers who can't afford them, but McCain
suggested the absence of a hard date for that reclamation meant there
would be not money either for the boxes or to help fund emergency
communications.
McCain suggested NAB's support for the compromise was tantamount to
selling out the 62-69 stations, many Hispanic and religious, and
though he endorsed the compromise, asked the FCC and the House
Commerce Committee to investigate its "discriminatory treatment" of
those stations.
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